pastrygirl

Uh, which of you is low-carb-ing? That looks a lot like pasta!

What do you typically cook for each meal? Do you eat leftovers or are you cooking every single meal from scratch every day?

Yes! I hate sweaty glove hands! So gross. I'll admit it, I am guilty of frequent bare hand contact. Sometimes gloves just get in the way, mostly I'd rather wash my hands and compost a paper towel than add more nitrile or latex or whatever to the landfill - my plastic wrap usage is bad enough! But seeing other people not using gloves can still strike a chord. There's a chocolatier who frequently posts pics of his kids in his commercial kitchen on social media- the little girl with crazy hair garnishing caramel truffles with salt is super cute but inappropriate for food production on multiple levels.

If there is no fan in your fridge, you're not getting much air circulation to begin with, so I was thinking that putting the molds directly on a cold surface would chill them more quickly. But I'm no physicist I don't routinely chill molds, only when it is warm in the kitchen - like above 70F. My work fridge is the sort that has wire racks and cold air blowing from both sides of a central column (2 door restaurant reach-in). Since the air blows directly on the molds, I don't need to leave them in very long - maybe 10 minutes for solid bars. So yeah, a fan in the fridge should definitely help.

Maybe diluted clam juice? Or vegetable stock would be lighter than chicken but still add some flavor.

@Jim D. First, ugh. Can you charge these prospective customers enough to make it worth the frustration? What are your overnight temps? I don't have AC so I just get up super early to beat the heat. Is humidity lower at a certain time of day? Despite our (in)famous Seattle rain, we have relatively dry summers, so I only worry about humidity when making macarons. I would definitely try a fan or several. A large box fan at 70F might be better at blowing away that latent heat of crystallization and not adding humidity than a home fridge with no fan. Otherwise, how about putting a pizza stone in the fridge ahead of time to pre-chill - wouldn't that conduct heat away faster than just the air in the fridge?

Depends on how much cocoa butter is in it. Are you using couverture (30%+ cocoa butter)? Not all chocolates are suitable for molding, for exactly that reason. Some have less cocoa butter and may be great for baking or as an ingredient, but too thick for molding. For example, Barry-Calleabut uses the 5 drop scale on their chocolate- 1 drop will be very thick, 5 will be very runny. You might use a 1 drop chocolate in a brownie recipe but should switch to a 3 or 4 for dipping or molding. As for bubbles - I don't know, I think bubbles are just bubbles.

Thanks for the update. Are you doing custom plates and the whole 9 yards? I can see why chefs geek out on plates, but the custom chairs in the Eater article seemed like gilding the lily. I think construction costs were most surprising to me - does that include material and labor, or just labor? $220k for construction and the place is only 1250 square feet. I wonder how well social media really translates into sales. Say you get 10k followers, how many of them are going to be local? For me, the cool thing about Instagram is following people all over the world. OTOH, the book can be shipped is already a source of sexy photos, maybe that will sell on social media. Or maybe people just like to look and it's forgotten 30 seconds later.

If the chocolate has been in temper for a while and has started to thicken despite being held at 32C, then yes you can raise the temp enough to melt out some of the crystals and have it still be in temper. As long as you don't melt all the crystallization out - do test it before using. Does that help?

$1.50 in COSTS for one piece does seem quite high. It may make more sense to break it down into food cost only, packaging, labor, and profit margin. Also allowing for waste and things like parchment paper & gloves used while making. Calculating food cost in metric is SOOOO much better!!! (Happy Canada Day) I make slabbed truffles that are cut into 22.5 x 22.5 x 15mm squares that are 9-10g each (average 115g per dozen) I don't enrobe them. Here's a rough breakdown on cost for my salty caramel truffles, my most popular flavor - for 1 ganache frame 1200 g chocolate @ $14/kg = $16.80 225 g butter @ $7/kg = $1.60 400 g sugar @ $1.14/kg = $0.45 400 g cream @ $4.25/kg = $1.70 salt, vanilla bean, cocoa powder = $1.00 total $21.55, cut into 225 squares = 9-1/2 cents each. But in practice I usually cut the edges off for samples so yield is reduced to 196 pieces at 11 cents each. So 11 cents each and 12 in a box is $1.32 in food (ingredients) cost for that item. Packaging is 35 cents for an inner clear box, 75 cents for a custom printed outer box, and 10 cents for an ingredients sticker for $1.20 in packaging. All packaging pieces could be less expensive if bought in large quantity. So this box of 12 truffles is $2.52 so far. Labor and overhead are much more nebulous. Some days I seem to spend hours watching chocolate melt, others are super productive. If active time on 1 frame of truffles (including mixing, cutting, dusting, and packing) is an hour and yield is 16 boxes then I need a dollar or more per box for labor. Now we're at $4 for ingredients and labor (if I want to pay a living wage and am as fast as I want to be). MSRP is $12. Overhead like rent & utilities should be a consideration, but not really your problem. Just make sure to allow enough margin that all the bills get paid eventually. Is the shop only chocolate or lots of other stuff? Rent is fixed but chocolate is seasonal and winter holidays subsidize the slow summer. In restaurants we always tried to keep food and labor costs below 30% each - as far as possible if there is to be any profit. Adding in packaging increases labor hours and expense and decreases the percentage allowed for ingredients. It kind of sucks. I have to do nutrition info and other tedious stuff, should probably take a good look at food cost, so I feel ya - wait a second, this is exactly what I was avoiding by being online!

Yeah, that is quite the long list. Does each of the bottom six ingredients have a specific, purposeful role? Do they copy a commercial stabilizer mix? I've used Cremodan but never tried to put together my own stabilizer mix. Is the maltodextrin the same stuff you use to make powders out of oils? If so, what does that do for ice cream? If not, what is it? This recipe is very low fat, I'd try changing the proportions of milk:cream, maybe add a touch more sugar. Are you trying to avoid using eggs?

I use a propane torch all the time to warm the bowl while re-beating previously frozen buttercream frostings. The key is to keep the torch moving so you don't make any hot spots. It's easy to see buttercream slide down the bowl as it melts, harder to see what's happening with nougat, which is so much thicker.

Under the skin, the spices may be protected from browning as much, but I don't know if that makes it worth the trouble or enhances flavor. You're hoping they'll penetrate the meat better? On top of the skin they will flavor the fat better ...

Thanks for the links. I haven't tried cutting caramels on the guitar because I'm 99% sure there would be a disaster of some sort, instead I use my guitar strings to mark the top of the caramel slab then cut by hand. So tedious! I'd say that yes, I have trouble with consistency from batch to batch. Lately because my candy thermometer died and little instant read digital ones can't be left in the pot. But some batches do end up squishier than others without that being my intent. I think there is some sort of correlation between formula and cook temp, but I'm not sure what it is - like if more or less butter in a given recipe equals a higher or lower cook temp to get the same texture. For my chewy caramels, I go to about 155-160F, a little hotter in the summer so they will be firmer at room temp - sometimes I'm cutting caramels when it's 60F in the kitchen, sometimes it's 70 . A few degrees does make a difference, which is not as crucial for caramels that will be wrapped in cello. More crucial for caramels to be dipped - too soft and they'll find the weak spots in the coating and ooze out. And that's why I haven't dipped caramels in a very long time! Caramel molds in use at the end of this video - so easy! Molds plus an enrobing line and voila! a zillion pieces of product (note: Fran did issue a correction on the "I invented them statement" she knows she just helped to popularize them in the US:

So French caramel is where you caramelize the sugar separately, and Maillard caramels are where you cook everything all together? Interesting, I'd never heard those terms for the two methods. I'm more curious about silicon caramel molds. Jim, what did you find, and how much time will they save over individually cutting by hand?

Tried TJ's Oven-Baked Cheese Bites today. Dammit, Joe! Why do you have to take cheese, one of my major weaknesses, and make it crunchy, my favorite texture? I think these were just made to torture me, and to make America even fatter. They are not pretending to be crackers or croutons, just cheese for eating and even though the package claims two servings, without a zip-top you're probably going to eat the whole pouch.

Yes. There are tons of restaurants but lots of turnover. Rent and wages are too high to not be full most nights. While restaurants have been multiplying, grocery stores have also been upping their game. Rotisserie chicken and Trader Joe's make it easy and more markets have huge salad and hot food bars.

The second photo looks great, and the third doesn't look too bad. Maybe the recipe is supposed to make flatter cookies. Not everybody likes super chunky cookies all the time! The lower photos look like totally acceptable cookies to me. A little flat, but not oozing butter or turning to lacy caramel at the edges. Better for ice cream sandwiches! I disagree with John, the flour may make a difference. Going from 13% protein to 10% is a stronger AP flour being replaced by more delicate AP or pastry flour. (Usually referred to as the protein content, not the gluten content. I think it only turns into gluten once you add water and agitate?) http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/22310/high-gluten-wheat-flours-amp-gluten-percentage-table http://www.theartisan.net/ProteinComparisons.htm

Does it actually form layers, or is it layers of flavor from the different ingredients? I'm curious why this is called "stratified" - I had never heard the term relating to cream sauce, but just saw it used in a social media post so I'm curious. This chef says his is reduced then chilled and whipped with aromatics. Anyone more familiar with this technique and how it got named?

WF had already started rolling out their "365" stores with more affordable selections, so maybe they will keep going in that direction.

Is that a nice way of saying they use crap chocolate? If they're not using premium ingredients, they might not want to pay for premium labor, but who knows. If you do take the job, we will enjoy hearing about the experience. Even though I've long been frustrated by how low the pay is for pastry work (don't specialists cost extra in every other industry?) i have much more sympathy now that I have my own business. It's profitable, but I'm still a long way from being able afford employees who want actual monetary pay instead of just chocolate!

Location? Looks like you are near Vancouver BC? Have they made you any offers? Hourly pastry cooks in restaurants here (Seattle) might get up to $18/hr MAX with solid experience, but chocolate is a more specialized skill and you're doing product development so maybe $20-25. What do various pastry jobs pay where you are? Restaurants in BC always seem a little more expensive than comparable places here, so hopefully they are paying staff better. And I suppose health insurance isn't a bargaining chip in Canada - here our salaries might be lower if the company is paying an extra several $K for benefits. If you don't want to give them your recipes then sub-contracting seems better. More efficient for your production if you're just making extra of your own products to sell to them. But if they are already established with some of their own recipes, that could be tricky.

I'm not sure how people do it. A lot of chocolate seems to be in relatively open cases, and just the room is air conditioned. I've had issues with condensation when going from freezer to room temp, but not with regular day-to-day humidity at consistent temp. It's not as muggy here as East coast summers, though. How humid would it be inside a bakery? How about other chocolate shops where you can see what cases they are using? Let's all do a little industrial espionage for Jim! Yeah, the woman who wanted the caramels was a little off. She kept going on about her French candy bags, what, is my packaging not cute enough? Some customers might make such a proposition worthwhile, just not that one! If you do end up selling by the piece, get a sign with your logo and info to put in the case with the product and a stack of business cards so people will know who made it.

Sorry, I didn't mean to be cryptic, I was responding to the question Restaurants are a tough business and controlling labor costs is a constant struggle - as well as finding skilled help to begin with. So maybe they are lazy and just don't care, or maybe the chef needs to prioritize labor allocation and dealing with fresh heads of lettuce is one of the corners that gets cut. If you get fresh romaine by the case it needs to be trimmed, cut, and washed. If you get bags of romaine hearts or cut leaves with preservatives there is much less work to do and it probably keeps longer. As for options - I don't know what produce wholesalers there are in western Montana. If there are no small specialty providers, chefs are stuck with Sysco (not known for being fine-dining quality), Costco, Restaurant Depot. All more likely to carry convenience products. With MT being mix of mountains and range land, maybe there are not the small farms and greenhouses that can provide beautiful fresh lettuces. Maybe it takes an extra day or 2 for produce to get there from CA and quality suffers so much that bagged salad starts to look good. Here in Seattle we have one huge produce wholesaler and many smaller ones, some all organic, some only microgreens, some foragers, there's this guy Merv who drives over from Yakima with summer goodie direct from the farms ... chefs here have lots of options. Chefs in Montana may not have as many.